Chapter Sixteen

Dane returned home feeling like a kid again in so many ways. For one, dawn’s pearlescent light was just creeping over the hills to the east, making the world around him appear in washed-out shades of gray. Yet there was a dull glow to everything, as if the world had been gilded. Or maybe that feeling of things being touched with gold was in Dane’s head, a sort of afterglow. He smiled.

Sneaking home early in the morning like this made him feel like a teenager again. He recalled sneaking out of his bedroom window to meet up with the guys in the neighborhood to drink beer and other potables cadged from parents’ liquor cabinets or refrigerators. It seemed so wild back then! If they were lucky, sometimes Buddy Rogers would manage to steal a fat and resinous bud from his brother Jake—who was a sophomore at Youngstown State University and kept a stash in his sock drawer—and he and his friends would get high, lolling around and giggling over the stupidest things. Until someone broke out the Twinkies and Doritos…

Dane, locking the car and heading up to his front door, recalled those days with nostalgia, but also a kind of perverse pain. Although he tried his best back then to hide it, especially from himself, he had an enormous crush on Buddy Rogers, who represented all the best parts of the good, solid German stock from which he was descended: dishwater blond hair, a cleft in his chin, and a body that was beefy, stocky, broad, but without an ounce of fat. Buddy was strength personified—with a goofy grin. Dane would try to make himself believe he and Buddy were simply best buds. That was how he rationalized the fierce sense of affection he had for him. It was hard to use that to explain away how he would find himself simply staring at Buddy as he took a bong hit or told yet another rude joke, but he made a good effort of it nonetheless. Only in Dane’s adolescent dreams, he couldn’t escape the fact that he was filled with desire for his friend. In those dreams there would be kissing, sucking, caressing of body parts that rarely saw the light of day. Dane would awaken from these dreams filled with guilt and shame, even though he would rationally ask himself, “Who has control over their dreams?” Often he would awaken with the inside of his boxers damp with come, which only served to make him feel more guilt ridden.

Dane could now allow himself to smile at the memory and how it segued into this very moment because once again, Dane found himself sneaking into his home after a night of debauchery.

Only the things he did with Seth through the long night? Those were not the stuff of dreams or a tortured imagination. They were real and too delicious to let the appearance of guilt or shame mar them.

Today also reminded him of mornings when he would slip back into his dorm at Miami University, on the other side of the state in Oxford, after spending the night with Katy in her dorm. He would feel somehow accomplished, and when his roommate, Jeff, would wake up to give him a sleepy yet knowing grin, Dane was proud. Proud to be part of the brotherhood of the straight. Wasn’t that proof? Hadn’t he passed the test?

He unlocked the door slowly and opened it the same way, praying the door wouldn’t creak and that his kids would sleep through his reentry into the house. He had lingered much too long with Seth, and he knew it. But the kids, both of them, slept like long-haul truckers, and Dane usually would just about have to resort to beating on a saucepan with a wooden spoon to wake them.

Except for this morning.

Stepping into the entryway on what he thought of as silent cat feet, he immediately spied Clarissa, sitting with her arms folded and legs crossed on the family room couch. At the sound of his footfall, she whirled around and lasered a glare at him, eyes narrowed, lips pulled down into a frown.

Seeing her was so shocking and her expression so severe, it took Dane by complete surprise. So much so that he let loose a startled, nervous laugh.

“Oh, so you think it’s funny?” Clarissa stood. She wore a nightgown Katy had bought her the previous Christmas. It was full-length, red plaid flannel, and when Clarissa had opened it, she’d made fun of it, saying something about “Grandma-style.” But now she couldn’t have looked less like a grandma. She looked like exactly what she was: his little girl, even though she was sixteen years old.

She put her hands on her hips and said the words disappointed mothers had been saying in similar situations for eternity. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”

Dane simply shook his head and mumbled, “God.”

“What?” Clarissa stared at him, her mouth slightly open. There was something like terror in her expression. “That’s all you have to say? Are you going to tell me where you’ve been? I’m not used to my father sneaking in at dawn. And I shouldn’t have to be.”

And all at once, the joy Dane had felt after his night with Seth, a night that was truly a revelation, an awakening, a release in so many ways, evaporated. The evening and its joy withered in the face of his daughter’s wrath and indignation.

He crossed in front of his daughter, swearing an icy chill emanated from her as he passed her and her unwavering stare. He kicked off his shoes and plopped down on the couch with a sigh.

“You gonna sit down here? So we can talk?” He reached for her hand, barely grazing the skin before she snatched it away. “Clarissa…” he pleaded. “Please.”

She whirled on him, actually shaking a finger close to his face. It made him want to laugh. It made him want to cry. It made him want to yell at her and ask, “Who’s the parent around here, anyway?”

She nudged him. “I want to know where you’ve been. I think I have a right to know.”

And Dane felt the first inklings of an emotion he hadn’t expected—indignation. Did she have a right? What were his rights? He breathed deeply, trying to maintain some calmness, attempting to tell himself his daughter had been going through very rough times. Then he reminded himself that these were times in which he’d been available for her almost every nonworking minute of his life. And yet his almost constant availability and devotion were cast aside, as if they didn’t matter. And what of all of Dane’s heartfelt pleas for communication, for talking about things with her? Her reaction had been consistent, if nothing more. She would lock herself in her room, her head hunched over her laptop or phone. She’d whisk herself away down the street to her best friend Jerri Lynn’s house, whose mom had mentioned to Dane that Clarissa was beginning to feel like a second daughter.

Dane peered into Clarissa’s face for a few moments to see what he could discern, what he might read there besides anger. Her eyes were moist, red-rimmed. He realized she’d been crying. That hurt his heart and made him want to gather his little girl up in his arms, if she would let him—which he very much doubted.

“Well?”

Dane thought for a moment, thinking how what he would say next was important, that it mattered. He finally chose his path and knew she might not like what he was about to say. “Clarissa, I honestly don’t know that where I was is any of your business. Parents, believe it or not, do have a right to some privacy.”

“Oh, so you don’t want to tell me. Never mind, Dad, you don’t have to. You’ve always been great at keeping secrets, right?” She turned her wounded eyes away to stare out the window at their backyard.

“What do you mean?” Dane knew, and he bristled at the unfairness of her words. Or were they really unfair, or a justified reaction to his own lack of courage and self-acceptance through the years? Again he told himself to choose what he said and how he said it very carefully.

She didn’t utter a word, a sound, for so long that Dane began to wonder if she was through talking to him—once again. Would she run off to her room? To Jerri Lynn’s? Would he never reach her again?

Or maybe she wasn’t saying anything because she somehow knew, knew exactly where he’d been and what he’d been up to? The thought caused a shiver to course through him.

But finally she spoke. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Dad. I heard you leave in the middle of the night, watched your car back out of the driveway. You looked like you couldn’t get out of here fast enough.” She laughed bitterly. “You were with some guy, weren’t you?” She shook her head.

Dane was a little relieved. At least the “some guy” reference gave him hope she didn’t yet know which guy.

“How is it we go all these months barely speaking, and the one time, because yes, Clarissa, this is the one and only time I’ve ever left you and your brother on your own for a few hours, this is when you take notice? And not only take notice but are outraged?”

“So it’s true?”

Dane debated whether or not to tell her. A lie was ready at his lips—someone from school, in trouble, needed him. He had spent the night with a sick or injured student at the emergency room at Summitville Hospital. It was credible, something Dane would do, and he took a small amount of pleasure in imagining the abashed look on Clarissa’s face.

But that pleasure was small and mean. Her question was giving him an opportunity, and he recognized it. He said simply, “I was with someone I care about.”

“A guy?”

“Yes. That does happen to be his gender. Is that important? Would you feel different if it were a woman?”

Clarissa shook her head, her lips pursing in a moue that could only be interpreted as disgust. “I guess not.” She shrugged. “Who cares, anyway?”

Dane stood and put his arms around Clarissa, even though she didn’t return the embrace, even though she, in fact, stood rigidly with her arms at her sides. Dane whispered in her ear, “I do. I care, honey. I’ll always care.”

She disengaged from him, just on the edge of pushing him away. “You have a funny way of showing it!” she shouted, and he could see the unshed tears standing in her eyes. “Abandoning us in the middle of the night. Shame on you.”

Dane collapsed onto the couch once more. Clarissa might be on the brink of womanhood, but right now she was nothing more than a scared little girl, his little girl, in sore need of comfort. “Honey, won’t you please sit down?”

Maybe because it was tiring to maintain such an air of righteous indignation, she did finally collapse on the opposite end of the couch. She stared straight ahead, rapidly twirling a lock of her hair and breathing faster.

“I did go out.”

“Booty call,” Clarissa whispered.

“Oh, come on, Clarissa. Grow up.”

“I’m not the one sneaking out of the house like a thief. Don’t tell me to grow up.”

“I’ll tell you what I want. I’m your father.”

“Who was it?” She twirled her hair faster.

“Do you really want to know?”

She paused for a second, maybe considering. “No. It makes me sick.” And then all at once she crumpled. She doubled over, and sobs racked her shoulders. Through her tears, she asked, “What would Mommy say? What would Mommy say?”

Dane scooted down the couch and put his arm around her shoulders, tentative at first, and when she didn’t resist, he squeezed her to him. He realized, all at once, that Clarissa’s confused feelings about him being gay were present, but the real root of her pain was the fear he’d replace her mother.

“Mom would say it’s okay. Mom would want us to be happy. I know that.”

She peered at him hatefully out of the corner of her eye. “How dare you.”

Dane contemplated how to tell her what he was about to say and, in the end, decided there was no other way than simply. “Clarissa, Mom has come to me.”

Her tears ebbed a bit, and she looked at him again, curiosity usurping outrage. “What are you talking about?”

“In dreams. At first, she wasn’t accessible. She was turned away. But more and more, she began to show her face, and she told me that I’d be all right. We’d be okay.” He sighed, closed his eyes at the memory, the memory of her. He felt his lips curl up in a smile and felt a warm rush of gratitude for those dreams and the opportunity—however ephemeral or brief—to be with Katy again. “I really think she’s with us. She knows and understands,” Dane said simply.

“Do you really believe that?” Clarissa asked with the sudden guilelessness of a child.

There’s hope for you yet, baby girl.

“I do. I can feel her, all around us.”

Clarissa returned her face to her palms and wept some more. Dane simply patted her shoulder, wondering if she’d cried like this since Katy’s passing. Certainly not in his presence…

“Love doesn’t go away because someone dies. What your mother felt for you, for Joey, and yes, even for me, is too powerful to just vanish. It’s with us. It’s always with us. You have to believe that, sweetheart.”

Dane reached over, ever so gently, and removed Clarissa’s hands from her face. He lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. He prayed his expression was open and kind.

“You have to believe that, because I see her now. In your face.” Dane shook his head. “In you, I see the young girl I met way back when. You look so much like her, not just physically—” He grinned. “But buried beneath all that teenage angst is her light—her kind heart.”

“I don’t know how kind it would be if she knew about you. About your lies.”

Dane closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. Patience. But Clarissa’s words would have been no less painful had they been accompanied by a jab to the belly with a knife. “That’s not fair, honey. The one person I lied to most was myself. But you know what wasn’t a lie?”

Clarissa shook her head.

“This might surprise you, but what wasn’t a lie was the love I felt, and still feel, for your mom. When it comes to love, real, pure love, we’re not gay, we’re not straight, hell, we’re not even male or female. We’re human. And I love that woman with all my heart. I always will.

“Sure, there are some things I’ve come to accept about myself since she passed away that change things. But it doesn’t change my love for her, doesn’t change the family we made—together.

“I don’t know if your mother knew about me, my feelings, or not, but I do know that if she did, she would have taken it hard. But in the end, I truly believe she would have tried to understand and would have stood by me, because that’s the kind of selfless person she was, and that’s the kind of pure love we had.

“If she hadn’t died that awful day last fall, you and I may have never had this conversation. I don’t honestly know if I ever would have come out. Part of me was so scared to face who I really was. And the real terror was how much it would hurt the people I love.

“But things happen in life. And I saw, after the funeral, that there was no reason to keep who I was a secret anymore. I could be who I was, who I always was.”

Was it possible? Did he see a softening in Clarissa’s features? She licked her lips and stared at him with eyes that were mournful but not disdainful.

“Dad, oh, Daddy,” she whispered.

He touched her cheek gently with his fingertip. “Every time I look at you, Clarissa, I see her. In your grace, in your smile, in the way you relentlessly twirl your hair.” He chuckled. “She lives on in you. She would be heartbroken if she knew we weren’t living on as family. Because one thing I know for sure—family was the most important thing to her.

“And it is to me too.”

Clarissa said, “So if I don’t want you to be gay, and I want you just to stay at home and be our daddy, you will be?”

Dane was taken aback by the question. “Honey?”

She smiled, and there was a hint of wickedness in it. “I’m kidding. I know you’re a guy,” she sighed. “And gay or not, guys have their needs.”

Dane, a father, did not want to wonder from where such wisdom came, not when it emerged from the lips of his sixteen-year-old daughter. “I guess so, sweetheart. We all will have to make adjustments as we grow.” Like, for example, I will have to adjust to how you know about guys and their needs. Do we need to have another talk? Do I need to take you down to Planned Parenthood?

“You okay?” Dane asked, because it seemed like there was little more left to say, at least in this moment. But for now it felt as though the door had swung open.

“I don’t know.” She smiled and reached for a lock of her hair and then jerked her hand away. “I guess so.”

“You must be tired, sitting up all night. Worried sick.”

She pushed him. “I was!”

“That makes me, in a perverse way, feel good. It shows you care.”

“Daddy! I never stopped caring. I just didn’t understand.”

“I know. I know. And I know that we still have a lot of work ahead of us.”

“So who’s this guy?” Clarissa asked.

“All in good time. All in good time. You’ll meet him.” Dane prevented himself from adding “You already have.” Saying that would only open a Pandora’s box, and he didn’t know if he was ready.

“Will I ever be ready for that?”

“Will I ever be ready to meet the man you love?” Dane wondered back.

“That’s a long way off,” Clarissa said.

“You never know, Clarissa. You never know. Love can sneak up on you when you least expect it.”

There were other words they could say, more banter waiting in the wings, but for now they were quiet. And quiet was good.

At last, as a shaft of golden sunlight suddenly warmed the family room, Clarissa leaned over and hugged her dad. “I love you,” she whispered. “Don’t ever doubt it.”

“I didn’t—not really. And I love you too. With all my heart.” He held her in his arms until they heard Joey stirring upstairs, the flush of the toilet, the tromp of his footfall at the top of the stairs.

They broke apart, but their smiles were warm.